Friday, August 31, 2012

We will see headlines about incidents like this until sanity is returned to gun ownership in America.

No doubt the restriction-free advocates of gun ownership will say that willful, angry and disturbed people will do what they intend to do regardless of the law, or that ubiquitous concealed or open carry will deter these mass killings, but if you make it child's play to obtain battlefield-service guns, what you get is a bigger and guaranteed body count.

TAMPA, Fla.
–
In a speech heavy on anecdotal history but short on policy details, Mitt Romney avoided major falsehoods in making his case to the American public while accepting the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention.

They've been fighting the facts on climate change, evolution and female physiology, so little wonder that the Fox/Faux News-fed, talk radio-driven propagandists would now turn their fire on independent fact-checkers who point out the falsehoods in the GOP ticket's pronouncements.

I doubt that Steele, adult that he is, would have green-lighted that
Clint Eastwood-stunt-gone-wrong - - letting the actor ad lib his way
through a demeaning, prime-time wasting attack on the US Presidency.

As a vaudeville act, you couldn't have done any worse, and to close that circle - - no one was there with the hook.

Amateurs!

And give Priebus low marks also for exercising zero control over the content of the nominees' speeches.

As a Wisconsinite and consummate pol, Priebus certainly knew - - as the independent fact-checkers announced quickly
- - that the Janesville GM plant had closed during the George W. Bush
administration, regardless of Paul Ryan's dishonest, home-town
revisionism.

And having called off day one of the convention because of the
dangers posed by Hurricane Isaac, how could convention planners, the
candidate himself and his staff let Romney wisecrack about rising seas
when the Gulf and much of the Southeast is and will be flooded.
Is Louisiana laughing?

Are the insurance companies laughing? No: they've been warning about
rising sea levels for years because they have underwritten policies
exposing themselves to billions and billions in losses as the Arctic ice
cap melts and seas rise and weather extremes are real.

Here was Romney's funny:

President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet…My promise is to help you and your family.

Not comedic. Or Presidential. As Mitt himself said Thursday, "We deserve better."

So the convention began as Isaac approached, and floundered while the rains kept falling.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

At the end of his acceptance speech Thursday night, Mitt Romney mocked Barack Obama for his concern over rising seas:

Said Mitt:

President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet…My promise is to help you and your family.

Big laugh line. Big laugh from the floor.

But how funny is it tonight near New Orleans? Or to the north, where the flooding is headed?

Are the insurance companies laughing? With facts and science on their side, they've been warning against rising sea levels for years because they have billions and billions of dollars of property insured along threatened coastlines.

Rising seas, melting Arctic ice, extreme and changing weather, fires, drought, and crop losses are all related and are not getting too many chuckles from Central Wisconsin to the plains to fire-riven Colorado and Texas.

Romney can make fun of science, but the joke is lost on the rest of us.

Ryan did the same thing: profess being lifted up by Obama's election, only to be let down during his term.

A load of BS, as Mitch McConnell and others announced early on the goal was to make Obama a one-term President, which meant filibustering, blocking and defeating any and everything - - even a jobs bill.

Even if Ryan drops the claim, the damage is done. From PolitiFact, right after Ryan's speech:

Says President Barack Obama broke his promise to keep a Wisconsin GM plant from closing.

Paul Ryan on Wednesday, August 29th, 2012 in a speech at the Republican National Convention in Tampa

Did Barack Obama break a promise to keep GM plant open?

...Our rating

Ryan said Obama broke his promise to keep a Wisconsin GM plant from
closing. But we don't see evidence he explicitly made such a promise --
and more importantly, the Janesville plant shut down before he took
office.

Kudos to the MSNBC crew for coming into an NBC interview with Scott Walker and, led by Rachel Maddow, challenging Scott Walker on the timing of the Janesville GM plant closing.

I'll bet the scripted and cautious Walker never figured he'd find himself on MSNBC and struggling to get his spin heard. And he complained that the hosts, also including Al Sharpton were talking over him - - a classic talk radio host ploy.

* Ryan is energetic and effective, and Team Obama has to be even more energetic and effective countering his slickly-delivered falsehoods: that President Obama raided $716 billion from Medicare - - the money was taken from insurance companies and hospitals for the care of low-income citizens, and that Pres. Obama closed the Janesville GM plant.

The New York Times
reminds us that Tea Partyish Republicans in Congress have forced cuts
in FEMA and US Army Corps of Engineer funding - - the very disaster
relief programs that will help rebuild the Gulf states when Hurricane
Isaac blows itself out and that may help save New Orleans from another
Hurricane Katrina-style catastrophe:

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Governors touted their states - - Wisconsin, Ohio, South Carolina,
New Jersey - - and told their personal or political stories, but had
little to say about Mitt Romney.

Wasn't that their assignment - - to flesh out a guy to a television
audience - - not to the conventioneers - - who remains a distant and
mysterious, country club fellow?

Instead, I saw a lot gratuitous praise for women, and a lot of egos
on display by governors and others who have their own agendas, but
Romney was an afterhought. I can't imagine he's happy about the evening
unless he's completely dense.

I also found it fascinating that this is the party of small
government and self-reliance, but two speakers - - Ann Romney and Chris
Christie - - touted publicly-funded government scholarship programs.

His Dad didn't get any government handouts as a child back then, so a pox on everyone put out of work today in the Bushwacked economy who doesn't have Santorum's Fox News paycheck savings and his fine federal pension on the horizon and home-school children subsidized with taxpayer funds - - but who might be using food stamps today.

Shame on these government dependents.

And like Walker before him, Santorum spends precious air time repeating the exposed lie about Obama relaxing welfare for work requirements - - but barely mentions Mitt Romney.

You'd think the National Republican Committee would have learned its lesson about the nominating Convention and race when officials disclosed a few days ago they were overtly aiming their core messages at disaffected white voters - - background, here - - but NBC Evening News has just reported that Convention officials have seated delegations near the front pf the hall and TV coverage from the small, but relatively diverse territories of Guam, the Virgin Islands, the Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico.

So there will be some relatively non-white faces on TV tonight, except those delegates from territories and not one of the 50 states of the District of Columbia cannot vote in the November election for the candidates they are nominating.

He's bold enough to accept the GOP's retrograde platform that would force sexually-assaulted women to bear their rapists' children - - though his disagreement with the position isn't important enough for him to try and change his party's platform.

That's having the election-year courage of someone else's convictions.

Court proceedings begin today in a lawsuit that seeks to stop
Wisconsin’s inaugural wolf hunting season. Dane County Circuit Judge
Peter Anderson will hear motions in the case today. Then on Wednesday, a
hearing will take place on a request for a temporary injunction to halt
the wolf season until the full lawsuit can be considered.

Mitt Romney was born on March 12, 1947, in Ohio, Florida, Michigan,
Virginia and several other swing states... He was given
the name Mitt, after the Roman god of mutual funds, and launched into
the world with the lofty expectation that he would someday become the
Arrow shirt man...

He uttered his first words (“I
like to fire people”) at age 14 months, made his first gaffe at 15
months and purchased his first nursery school at 24 months. The school,
highly leveraged, went under, but Romney made 24 million Jujubes on the
deal...

Romney also went on a mission to France. He
spent two years knocking on doors, failing to win a single convert. This
was a feat he would replicate during his 2008 presidential bid...

After Harvard, he took his jawline to Bain Consulting... While at Bain,
he helped rescue many outstanding companies, like Pan Am, Eastern
Airlines, Atari and DeLorean...

He barely won the 2012 Republican primaries after a grueling nine-month
campaign, running unopposed...If elected, he
promises to bring all Americans together and make them feel inferior.

When Tea Party Republican Florida Governor Rick Scott told southern county residents to evacuate, they did so on Interstate highways built mostly with federal funding.

As Isaac turned west towards Louisiana, small government Tea Party Republican cheerleader Gov. Bobby Jindal complained to President Barack Obama that the feds shorted his state in emergency planning money.

And when the storm passes, it will be the federal government - - spending tax money - - that leads the cleanup and reconstruction.

As it should.

Pity that Republican governors along the Gulf Coast and GOP obstructionist tightwads in the House of Representatives do not understand that the plight of the long-term unemployed, or drought-ravaged farmers - - fellow Americans trying to return to productivity - - is no less desperate.

The New York Times reminds us that Tea Partyish Republicans in Congress have forced cuts in FEMA and US Army Corps of Engineer funding - - the very disaster relief programs that will help rebuild the Gulf states when Hurricane Isaac blows itself out and that may help save New Orleans from another Hurricane Katrina-style catastrophe:

Between 2010 and 2012, House Republicans forced a reduction of 43
percent in the primary grants from the Federal Emergency Management
Agency that pay for disaster preparedness. That is $1.8 billion that
will not be available for evacuation equipment and supplies,
communications gear that lets first responders speak to one another, and
training exercises...

That spending was enormously useful during last year’s tornadoes in
Joplin, Mo., and Tuscaloosa, Ala. Although the effects of the cuts will
not be felt yet as gulf states deal with this week’s storm, they will
leave the region less prepared for future hurricanes, tornadoes and
floods.

The New Orleans area, in particular, will rely this week on $14 billion
in levee construction, pumps and other flood control structures built by
the Army Corps of Engineers since Katrina. But the corps’s construction
budget has been cut by 21 percent since 2009 because of Republican
pressure, hitting flood prevention especially hard.

The platform, snagged by Politico
on Friday afternoon after the Republican National Committee
accidentally posted it to its website before taking it down, is
scheduled to be approved at the convention early this week.

The text details the privatization policy that GOP lawmakers have
supported for years, and that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are selling as
necessary to “save” Medicare.

But I don't think you will hear Walker touting the Mercury Marine
expansion, and not because he's down in Tampa getting ready to tell the
GOP faithful that he busted unions in Wisconsin, and so can you.

It's because Mercury Marine was saved as a Wisconsin employer through the intervention of Gov. Jim Doyle, (D) and a union that accepted concessions.

Walker has little use for private-sector unions as well - - except as
fodder for divide-and-conquer strategies tailored to serve major
state corporations and donors - - and like the talk radio shows who
promote Walker at ever turn, only use Doyle as a punching bag.

Big let's all be fair and balanced about it and give credit where
credit is due: to union members who made sacrifices, and to the former
Democratic Governor who provided public sector leadership when it
counted to save jobs and pave the way for growth.

The Sunday New York Times, as close as we have to a national paper of record's leading edition, featured yesterday a troubling disclosure and analysis of the Romney-Ryan campaign's decision to stir the racial pot in search of a winning recipe.

Said The Times, in part:

TAMPA, Fla. — Mitt Romney is heading into
his nominating convention with his advisers convinced he needs a more
combative footing against President Obama in order to appeal to white,
working-class voters and to persuade them that he is the best answer to
their economic frustrations.

Having survived a summer of attacks but
still trailing the president narrowly in most national polls, Mr.
Romney’s campaign remains focused intently on the economy as the issue
that can defeat Mr. Obama. But in a marked change, Mr. Romney has added a
harder edge to a message that for most of this year was focused on his
business and job-creation credentials, injecting volatile cultural
themes into the race...

The strategic shift in the campaign
message that has been unfolding in recent weeks reflects a conclusion
among Mr. Romney’s advisers that disappointment with Mr. Obama’s
economic stewardship is not sufficient to propel Mr. Romney to victory
on its own.

This is dangerous righty talk radio territory - - playing to an angry
base, appealing to fear and victimization - - reminiscent of other
intentionally divisive presidential campaign race cards - - Ronald
Reagan's "welfare queens" rhetoric, or Richard Nixon's southern strategy
- - with the way paved by the overtly segregationist George Wallace.

Team Romney is willing to unearth the worst in the
country's body politic and embrace our original and historical
cultural sin.

And employed as the ugly, final, tactical phase of four years of
far-right race-baiting to discredit the country's first African-American
President by continually painting Barack Obama as an illegitimate
outsider who somehow seized the country that needs to be taken back.

The Times story is especially noteworthy because it flatly calls
false an allegation in a new, inflammatory Romney ad without citing an
independent analyst or third-party vetting service - - essentially
challenging the rest of the media to condemn the ad and the tactics
behind it before the strategy gains a toe-hold:

Many of those voters are economically
disaffected, and the Romney campaign has been trying to reach them with
appeals built around an assertion that Mr. Obama is making it easier for
welfare recipients to avoid work. The Romney campaign is airing an
advertisement falsely charging that Mr. Obama has “quietly announced”
plans to eliminate work and job training requirements for welfare
beneficiaries, a message Mr. Romney’s aides said resonates with
working-class voters who see government as doing nothing for them.

It will be interesting to see if the Journal Sentinel amplifies the
Times' analysis, given that Paul Ryan, the GOP Vice-Presidential
candidate is from Wisconsin.

And by being on the ticket grants his blessing to a strategy which could propel him to the Vice-Presidency and beyond.

The Oneida County Board of Supervisors decided Tuesday against pursuing mining as a vehicle for economic development.After
three hours of discussion, including emotional testimony from a number
of mining opponents, the board voted 12-9 to discontinue exploring the
feasibility of opening a mine in the town of Lynne or in any other part
of the county...

Since
the resolution failed to receive a majority vote, mining “will no
longer proceed as a policy goal for Oneida County,” Corporation Counsel
Brian Desmond said. “The mining issue will be stricken from the agendas
(of the Forestry Committee),” he added.

TAMPA, Fla. — Mitt Romney
is heading into his nominating convention with his advisers convinced
he needs a more combative footing against President Obama in order to
appeal to white, working-class voters and to persuade them that he is
the best answer to their economic frustrations...

The Romney campaign is airing an advertisement
falsely charging that Mr. Obama has “quietly announced” plans to
eliminate work and job training requirements for welfare beneficiaries, a
message Mr. Romney’s aides said resonates with working-class voters who
see government as doing nothing for them.

The moves reflect a campaign infused with a sharper edge and overtones
of class and race. On Friday, Mr. Romney said at a rally that no one had
ever had to ask him about his birth certificate, and Mr. Ryan invoked
his Catholicism and love of hunting. Democrats angrily said Mr. Romney’s
remark associated him with the fringe “birther” camp seeking falsely to portray Mr. Obama as not American.

It was just fifteen days ago that Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan for the campaign co-pilot seat, and they've been in rough skies ever since.

Ryan spent the first few days saying he wasn't really trying to kill Medicare as we know it, then burned up part of a week by denying, then admitting that, yes, he had solicited funds from the very federal stimulus program he'd repeatedly condemned.

And just as that fire was put out, sort of, Ryan's legislative far-right pally Todd Akin burst on to the scene with his now-infamous screwy suggestion that raped women could magically prevent their pregnancies and thus were not entitled to abortions - - misogynist cruelty on par with the proposal Akin and Ryan had endorsed in the House of Representatives to limit federally-funded abortions to only women who had been raped "forcibly."

Ryan had become the Dick Tracy comic strip character with a personal rain cloud over his head - - and just as Ryan was to jet off for the Tampa Convention a bigger, legitimate storm - - Hurricane Isaac - - took aim at the Florida Gulf Coast and has already cut at least one day off four days of GOP hoopla there.

They say national party nominating conventions are intentionally superficial and scripted, but this one won't escape some discussion of changing climate extremes - - Ryan voted against measures to stem greenhouse gas emissions (see a report on Ryan's record, p. 136) - - even if the Tampa event puts more climate change deniers under one roof than attended the last ALEC reunion.

Tampa had already heavily borrowed police from across Florida to help with convention security, and that was before Isaac began to bear down on the convention city.

Nothing has gone right for the the GOP since Ryan loped into an oddly-choreographed early Saturday morning news conference/photo op on the dock off the USS Wisconsin, now a museum ship permanently tied up in Virginia.

It's still a long way to November 6th - - but shorter by two weeks, and counting, then when Ryan joined Team Romney.

Rocky takeoff for sure, in part because Ryan didn't use those two lost weeks to show us he's ready to sit in the Captain's seat.

It's a huge promotion for Quirk, who was blocked from the top Waukesha water job by Duchniak - - recruited from Oak Creek to Waukesha with the long-term water supply issue a top priority.

Duchniak was recently provided by the utility commission with a vehicle and cash bonus opportunities as its slow-moving and precedent-setting Lake Michigan diversion application moves forward.

It will be interesting to see what impact if any this has on that application, a major and controversial water utility project in Waukesha over the past few years.

The team that put together or promoted the application for Waukesha has changed markedly.

City administrator Lori Luther left in the summer of 2011.

In early 2010, the utility parted ways with its long-term application technical consultant, and Mayor Larry Nelson, a diversion proponent, was defeated in April, 2010, by current incumbent Jeff Scrima.

Mitt Romney and Tommy Thompson are withholding their tax returns for the same basic reason: the self-serving political narratives they are selling in TV commercials would be undermined by a fuller explanation of where and how they made their millions.

Tommy knows he'd be justifiably defined as just another Washington DC insider by greater disclosure about business relationships that came his way after serving as George W. Bush's cabinet Secretary of Health and Human Services.

And he also knows that that two-thirds of the voters in the August 14 GOP primary - - potential swing or stay-at-home voters come November - - were more aligned with Tea Partiers who know that the insiders' revolving door Tommy spun through keeps Big Government and its enablers fully-staffed, fueled and rewarded.

Tommy still wants people to think he's just a farmer from Elroy: nitty-gritty details of the real story - - 'How I Went To Washington And Became A Millionaire' - - would turn his good-old-boy story to fiction.

Romney is presenting himself and the Bain Capital investment firm he created as an All-American success story, but Bain isn't a Main Street hardware store or suburban strip mall filling station.

Bain and Romney benefited from arcane accounting methods and wrung every dollar imaginable out of a tax code that wealthy legislators provided, and which the Ryan budget expands - - including off-shore and Swiss bank accounts.

This costly technical work and the investment vehicles it drives are far beyond the means of everyday small business owners and working people, and using these special opportunities to amass a $250 million fortune paints Romney into an insider's corner smaller and more exclusive than Tommy's.

By hiding their income tax returns, Romney and Tommy are clumsily trying to conceal whom they really are.

Can they, should they get away with it?

Let's hope not - - and if they lose, some of the blame will be correctly assessed to their distrust of a full evaluation by the voting public, and their preference for secrecy over disclosure in a democracy.

A newly-released audit from the office of Republican Florida
Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, a Mitt Romney supporter and
former member of the U.S. House Republican leadership, says that the
2009 stimulus bill did benefit the state of Florida.

“Based on reports received by the [Office of Energy], the State of Florida
has benefited from the investment of [American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act] funds,” the report says, pointing to jobs created and
retained as well as energy cost savings through the distribution of
stimulus funds.

The battle in Wisconsin over large dairies and their neighbors is coming to a head in the Town of Saratoga, near Wisconsin Rapids, where woodlands atop unusually clean groundwater and near trout streams could be compromised by the construction of a massive dairy operation.

You heard about this? Okay. The New
York Daily News is reporting that the Empire State Building shooter did
indeed kill his boss. He was fired. He went out there and he killed his
boss. I wonder if Obama's constant warfare on bosses and so forth might
have led this guy to pull the trigger...?

"Oh, no. Rush, you didn't really say that! We have time on the delay to bleep it. No, Rush! Oh, you didn't really say that!"

Yes, I said it, and we're not gonna bleep it out...Who's out there ripping bosses to shreds every day? Who's out
there ripping businesses to shreds every day?

Paul Ryan is nominated
because he is the architect of a budget plan that keeps the tax code
working to protect and enhance the Romney niche wealth - - again at the expense of other people.

The Campaign strategy:

After
the nominations, with the help of Super PAC's and the Citizens United
decision, Republicans will spend about a half-billion dollars convincing
all the other people that Romney and Ryan are working for them.

Romney-Ryan
will count on the power of wealth already disproportionately showered
by the tax code on the 1% to achieve the unabashed commercial flim-flamming of the electorate - - greased by swing-state voter suppression laws - - in the most cynical and corrupt political
act in American history.

Details are sketchy, but if it is correct that a man killed a former co-worker with a .45 pistol, then shot it out with police who killed him in the heart of New York City:

* A .45 is a very heavy weapon. the .45 semi-automatic was originally a military sidearm. Why should police officers and civilians end up in its line of fire on crowded streets and sidewalks?

* The shooting took place in one of the most densely-populated spots in the world - - near the Empire State Building. How long will it take for the pro-gun movement to say that the shootout would have been shorter or less harmful - - the shooter and his target are dead and at least a half-dozen other people injured - - if everyone had been carrying a gun and returned fire?

I was getting ready to write about the ironies of the GOP's climate change denial position should a major storm disrupt the Tampa convention, but hurricane Isaac and the National Journal beat me to it.

While scientists caution that no single weather event can be directly
attributed to climate change, major weather events associated with
climate change, such as this summer’s drought, and the 2005 hurricanes
Katrina and Rita, tend to fire up the incendiary debate about climate
change -- which could happen once again if a massive political
convention gets hit by a major storm.

The Republican party has
shifted hard to the right on climate change since the last presidential
election -- in 2008, McCain campaigned on the promise of tackling
climate change, and embraced the cap-and-trade policy that has since
become politically toxic within his own party. Now, denying the
scientific findings linking oil and coal pollution to climate change has
become mainstream in the GOP, and nominee Mitt Romney has publicly
walked back his formerly expressed views that humans contribute to
global warming.

And Romney just yesterday outlined a plan to greatly expand fossil-fuel exploration and dependency, so has set the table for a full discussion of the consequences of fossil-fuel combustion = = greenhouse gas production and release, which scientists say is directly related to an overheating planet and more extreme weather.

Let's hope no one is injured as Isaac approaches or strikes Tampa, though the possibility of a political storm in any case is more than likely.

Despite what you will hear in GOP commercials, the Ryan budget does not reduce the deficit. A great explanation of The Ryan Myths:

I’ve worked closely with Rep. Paul Ryan. He’s an honest and amiable guy. In part because of his winning personality, Ryan, Mitt Romney’s running mate
in the presidential election, has convinced many in Washington that his
budget blueprint is a serious proposal for solving our long-term fiscal
problems. Unfortunately, it’s not. Let’s dig into the asterisks of
Ryan’s plan and unearth the fine print.

What was surprising was how quickly Ryan asked when would wetland fill
permitting in Wisconsin allow mitigation banking, the practice of
spending public money to create or maintain a new wetland after an
existing wetland is filled in. He made it very clear that he thought
this should be a high priority, and he mentioned his family company’s
experience moving earth.

Creating a new wetland requires the
moving a lot of earth, and it so happens that Paul Ryan’s family owns
one of the nation’s largest earth moving companies, Ryan Incorporated Central. On its website the company touts its experience and expertise in constructing wetlands.

...the
most disturbing thing about the meeting was that he so blatantly made it
clear that his primary interest was changing the wetland fill
permitting process so that his family’s business might be able to belly
up to the trough and get profitable contracts...

The fact that he made this leap to personal benefit so
quickly with two strangers left me with a very bad taste in my mouth,
and no confidence that Ryan was in office to act in the interests of the
public.

You may know that U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan is the first member of Generation X
slated on a major party presidential ticket. But if you think this
translates into Ryan offering a fresh, forward-thinking approach,
speaking to the challenges facing his generational peers, "don't believe
the hype," as our 1988 Gen X anthem goes.

[Ross is Executive Director of One Wisconsin Now. I sit on OWN's C-3 Institute board.]

So far in 2012, the monthly numbers show a net increase of 2,400 jobs.

When considered with the census numbers, the state has created an
estimated 21,951 jobs since Walker took office. That means the state
will need to create 228,049 more jobs before the end of Walker's term in
2014 for him to achieve his goal. (Here is our graphic monitoring changes).

Paul Ryan has been in The Todd Akin Avoidance Bunker this week ever since Ryan's reliable Missouri anti-abortion clone commandeered the national conversation with a weird lecture about rape and female physiology that threw science, base-line respect for 51% of the population and the entire Romney-Ryan campaign game plan under the bus.

So Ryan, who strongly opposes abortion even in cases of incest and rape, and supports the total abortion ban implicit in the so-called Personhood legislation he and Akin have backed, eventually had to face the media traveling with him and explain the contradiction he'd come to represent without looking like a fool or a hypocrite:

Walk that far-right line to keep the Tea Party and Right-to-Life movement satisfied - - the reason he is on the ticket - - while at least appearing to defer to Papa Bear Romney, who has said he supports abortion exceptions in rape and incest cases.

So Ryan abandoned the fatally-toxic Akin, but muffed the scene because he couldn't tell the complete truth about just how Akin-like he really is.

So reporters pressed Ryan - - unlike the obsequious talk show hosts who let Ryan and his ilk prattle on without a challenge - - about the qualitative difference between Akin's signature, offensive stance on "legitimate rape" and the "forcible" rape language Ryan and Akin wanted added to federally-permitted abortion funding to narrow the exception.

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank nicely-framed Ryan's failed effort to mislead the media; the episode will be remembered when Ryan wanders off script or the Fox 'News' set where real reporters might be able to interview him:

“Look, I’m proud of my record,” he told reporters on his plane, but
“Mitt Romney is going to be president, and the president sets policy.
His policy is exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother. I’m
comfortable with it because it’s a good step in the right direction.”

Does
he now regret his sponsorship of legislation that made a distinction
between “forcible rape” and other kinds — a position eerily similar to
Akin’s “legitimate rape”?

“That bill passed, I think, by 251 votes,” Ryan replied. “It was bipartisan.” He neglected to mention that it passed after removal of the “forcible” language.

Mitt Romney was a devotee during his 2007 presidential campaign of
one Dr. John Willke, a leading right-to-live physician who has promoted weird ideas about female physiology and rape that were channeled the other day by Republican Senate
candidate Todd Akin.

Hailing him as "The Father Of The Pro-Life Movement" and "an important
surrogate for Governor Romney's pro-life and pro-family agenda," the
Romney for President campaign in 2007 welcomed Willke's endorsement.

"I am proud to have the support of a man who has meant so much to the
pro-life movement in our country," Romney said in a statement at the
time. "He knows how important it is to have someone in Washington who
will actively promote pro-life policies. Policies that include more than
appointing judges who will follow the law but also opposing taxpayer
funded abortion and partial birth abortion. I look forward to working
with Dr. Willke and welcome him to Romney for President."

Willke was equally effusive. "Governor Romney is the only candidate who
can lead our pro-life and pro-family conservative movement to victory in
2008," he said in the statement.

And in the wake of Akin's controversial remarks - - including that women who are raped don't get pregnant - - Willke reprised his beliefs in The New York Times:

“This is a traumatic thing — she’s, shall we say, she’s uptight,” Dr.
Willke said of a woman being raped, adding, “She is frightened, tight,
and so on. And sperm, if deposited in her vagina, are less likely to be
able to fertilize. The tubes are spastic.”

Leading experts on reproductive health, however, dismissed this logic.

“There are no words for this — it is just nuts,” said Dr. Michael
Greene, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology
at Harvard Medical School.

The independent, non-profit and esteemed Guttmacher Institute on family planning cited this data - - yes, I know, some of that stupid science King's pal Cong. Todd Akin can access on the House Science Committee - - in 1996:

Recent studies indicate that at least half of all babies born to minor women are fathered by adult men.1

"I don’t
believe it’s right for party bosses to decide" who the Missouri Senate candidate should be, and “It makes me uncomfortable to think that the party bosses
are going to dictate who is going to run," but it's OK for those same party bosses - - nearly all men - - to write a convention platform and frame legislation giving government the right to choose for women - - and to dictate that women who are raped should be forced to give birth to their rapist's baby.

No. (Later, 'OK, yes I did, several times, but it was my staff's fault.')

* Missouri GOP Senate candidate Cong. Todd Akin, on dropping out of the race after his "legitimate rape"comments:

No.

* Iowa GOP Congressman Steve King, a Todd Akin backer, on whether incest or statutory rape can lead to pregnancy:

No. (Actually, his exact comment was, "Well, I just haven’t heard of that being a circumstance that’s been
brought to me in any personal way and I’d be open to hearing discussion
about that subject matter.")

* Paul Ryan, on allowing abortion in cases of rape and incest:

No. (Later, 'OK, yes in rape cases, but only because it's Romney's position.')

* Any chance the Republican Party platform being prepared for next week's convention in Tampa will soften its long-standing position on allowing abortion in cases of rape and incest?

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation doesn’t have any
preliminary or potential I-94 reconstruction / expansion plans available
yet for public view, and WisDOT spokeswoman Emlynn Grisar said there
should be information on options in three or four months.

Nothing has been decided, according to WisDOT — not whether lanes
will be added, not whether any Hawley Rd. ramps will be closed, and not
whether any additional land WisDOT wants for freeways near the Story
Hill neighborhood will be taken from Miller Park parking lots or
elsewhere — like the neighborhood itself.

A devastating spill in 2010 into the Kalamazoo River in neighboring Michigan from an Enbridge company tar sand pipeline revealed weak regulations and high risks for moving the toxic, oily goo - - "dilbit" to insiders - -from Canada to the US, and there are plans to move even greater quantities across Wisconsin and over the critical US Ogallala Aquifer from the Dakotas to the Gulf of Mexico, says this report in The New York Times.

After the dilbit gushed into the river, it began separating into its
constituent parts...No one could say with
certainty what they should do. Federal officials at the scene didn’t
know until weeks later that the pipeline was carrying dilbit, because
federal law doesn’t require pipeline operators to reveal that
information.

The 2010 spill could have been worse if it had reached Lake Michigan, as
authorities originally feared it might. Lake Michigan supplies drinking
water to more than 12 million people. Fortunately, the damage was
restricted to a tributary creek and about 36 miles of the Kalamazoo,
used primarily for recreation, not drinking water.

This close call hasn’t deterred the energy industry from announcing
plans to build or repurpose more than 10,000 miles of pipelines to carry
dilbit to the United States and global markets. That includes the
controversial Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL pipeline, which would pass
through the Ogallala aquifer, the nation’s largest drinking water
aquifer.

With the election just 10 weeks away, Wisconsin in play and the Romney/Ryan campaign stalling on issues from Medicare to legitimate raping, Wisconsin's Attorney General JB Van Hollen proves his GOP cred by getting on the voter suppression bandwagon.

While national Republican power brokers are trying to get Senate candidate Cong. Todd Akin off the Missouri ballot before a crucial Tuesday evening deadline, one Missouri GOP leader is sticking by the candidate who managed to put the words "legitimate" and "rape" together and into the political vocabulary.

“The congressman is totally, firmly, solidly pro-life,” Sharon Barnes, a
member of the state Republican central committee, said, adding that Mr.
Akin believed “that abortion is never an option.”

Ms. Barnes echoed Mr. Akin’s statement that very few rapes resulted in
pregnancy, adding that “at that point, if God has chosen to bless this
person with a life, you don’t kill it...”

Ms. Barnes said that she believed that the controversy would blow over,
and that once people in the state became more familiar with Mr. Akin,
they would learn “what a great, conservative, godly man Todd Akin is,
and they’ll put his comment in its proper context.”

From "anonymous" - - Apparently everyone in Madison
believes the native eco-stereotype in tuned with the earth mother and
all that other happy horseshit, when in reality they are nothing but
publicity hounds, pounding drums and disrupting whatever they can to
appear important and knowledgeable due entirely to their racial
heritage...

From "how can you be so clueless" - - You Madison liberals are truly
clueless. The 10,000 plus people who put down good money for the
chance to kill a wolf should tell you what Wisconsinites really think.
The only thing Indians care about is cheating you out of your money at
their casinos and gaining political power by pretending they have a
right to that which they do not own and did nothing to produce.

It
is best that you stay in your little imaginary world in Madison and
type on your computer and stay away from the reality of northern
Wisconsin.

From "real american" - - These Indians must be the most delicate, fragile creatures on earth;
they are threatened by everything from killing a few wolves to someone
digging up a few rocks. Real Americans, on the other hand, see no
threats, accept no threats and have no threats. We kill off the
wolves and then we bring them back and then we kill them again. We
dig up the earth for iron and then make the hole in the ground into
lakes and parks. We burn coal and oil and when we run out of that we
just dig and find more. We spill a few chemicals in the river and
then we clean it up. We don’t stop doing things for fear of the
consequences, we just do it and when we break something we fix it. We
cut down all the trees, and then we plant new ones. We nuke the shit
out of cities and then we go in and plant flowers. We don’t sit around
whining and crying about how we destroyed the earth, we just go about
and build a new one and its no big deal. Stand up! Be strong! Be
Proud! Be a real American! Get that wolf tag today.

So I was struck by the thoughtful tone and informative content at the top of an editorial in the Oshkosh Northwestern- - a Gannett chain paper, by the way, so hardly a lefty, underground freebie - - that raised some basic questions about the DNR's permitting dogs in the hunt.

Some organizations have earned the community’s respect and the right
to be heard as authoritative voices on issues where their expertise and
judgment have never been called into question.

One
such organization is the Oshkosh Area Humane Society, which joined a
chorus of voices across Wisconsin in speaking out against the rushed and
ill-advised regulations for a wolf hunt this fall“We
received our first inquiry for four large dogs to be used for hunting
wolves in the upcoming October wolf hunting season,” executive director
Joni Geiger explained in an e-mail message to area media. “I find this
appalling and I am ashamed Wisconsin would take such a giant step
backwards when it comes to animal welfare.”

I'm not sure if criticism of the hunt, or a lawsuit filed against it over the issue of allowing dogs in the chase - - a practice barred in all other states - - will have any impact before the hunt opens in October.

Several acknowledged wolf experts in Wisconsin, including retired DNR
managers Dick Thiel and Randy Jurewicz as well as University of
Wisconsin researcher Adrian Treves, filed statements warning against the
use of dogs to hunt wolves.

In written testimony, Thiel said wolves would regard dog packs as a threat.

"Attacks will be swift and furious," wrote Thiel, former manager of
the Wisconsin wolf program. "Dogs will be seriously injured and die, and
wolves will be injured and die as they both fight by slashing out."

Tampa, Florida (CNN) - The Republican Party is once
again set to enshrine into its official platform support for "a human
life amendment" to the Constitution that would outlaw abortion without
making explicit exemptions for rape or incest, according to draft
language of the platform obtained exclusively by CNN late Monday.

Set aside the partisan politics: How about disassociating the party from someone who has demonstrated he doesn't have, as my Mother would have said, a brain in his head. And shouldn't be given a dime of public salary, or a shred of power to vote on laws, budgets, treaties, ambassadors and judges?

Banned in Milwaukee

The right, suburbanites say "No light rail for Milwaukee."

James Rowen's Bio

James Rowen, a writer and consultant, has worked for newspapers, and as the senior Mayoral staffer, in Madison and Milwaukee, WI. This blog began on 2/2/ 2007. Posts run also at various news sites, including The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's "Purple Wisconsin."